As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!

Sunday, August 01, 2010

Still More Zadroga

You may have heard that the The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2009 was voted down the other day. I still take no position on whether the air quality at Ground Zero has contributed significantly to health problems of the workers on the pile. I'll leave that to the epidemiologists. We'll know one way or another whether this is another "Gulf War Syndrome" or not.

But the odd thing is that the Democrats insisted on keeping Zadroga's name associated with the bill. I hadn't looked him up in awhile, but here's a very good article on his death at that well-known neocon site, the New Yorker.

The type of material found in Zadroga’s lungs was also significant. Talc and cellulose are widely used pharmaceutical ingredients, Hirsch noted, but neither was considered a major respiratory hazard at Ground Zero: talc because it wasn’t found in the air in abundance; cellulose because it is not considered particularly hazardous. (The molecules are too large to pass through the elaborate filtering apparatus of the upper airway.) The absence of needle marks Hirsch deemed insignificant, because clean needles cause less scarring.

And:

The truth of this is hard to gauge. Four months after meeting with Joe, I wrote to the Zadrogas’ lawyer, who agreed to fax me a copy of the results of James’s 2003 biopsy, the one that Joe had said showed extensive lung damage. The document that arrived was eight pages long: a comprehensive report on the various tests and their findings. But its import was unequivocal. The lungs had only minor abnormalities and showed no evidence of talc or cellulose. When I contacted a pathologist unconnected with the case to ask whether this could have been an oversight, he scoffed, explaining that, under the polarized light that labs use to spot foreign particulate matter, such particles shine out like stars in the night sky. Had the material Breton found in Zadroga’s lungs in 2006 been there in 2003, it would have lit up the lab.

Note as well that Zadroga's wife, who did not work on the pile, died suddenly. The cause is not known, but this is very suggestive:

In Florida, however, events took a strange turn. About a year after the move, Ronda died, suddenly, at the age of twenty-nine. The news came as a surprise to Joe. “We didn’t even know she was sick!” he told me. When I asked what could have killed Ronda so abruptly, Joe suggested that it was stress—the burden of looking after a young child and an invalid husband. “It was just too much for her,” he said. Reached by phone, Ronda’s mother would not talk about her daughter’s death. A family friend, however, said that the actual cause was blood poisoning, brought on by intravenous drug use, adding that “everybody down here knew what was going on.” A local investigation noted that, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office, Ronda’s lethal infection could not be conclusively determined to be the result of intravenous drug use. But track marks and multiple needle punctures were found on the body, and a toxicology report revealed non-toxic levels of drugs, including methadone.

36 Comments:

Looking for a third opinion, Zadroga's family turned to Dr. Michael Baden, the New York State Police chief forensic pathologist. Baden, who had previously reviewed the case, said he agreed with the New Jersey medical examiner, finding that Zadroga's lung damage was caused by inhaling Ground Zero poisons.

"He suffered inflammation of the lungs due to inhaling particulate matter while at the World Trade Center," Baden said.

Baden said Zadroga had a type of "black lung" disease typically seen in coal miners and caused by inhaling particulate matter.

Under a microscope, "You could see glass fibers there," Baden said. "You don't get that from injecting drugs."

Workershealth.com.au wrote, "...With the boom in construction going on around Sydney, we often see workers in excavators digging in a cloud of dust. Or you may see construction workers drilling or cutting into concrete with no respiratory protection.

"These workers are at high risk of developing silicosis, a serious lung disease caused by the accumulation of silica dust in the lungs. The scarring of the lungs causes stiffening which will obstruct breathing and cause shortness of breath. This can lead to permanent heart and lung disease.

"Silica is the main component in sand and in rocks like sandstone and granite. Many workplaces are not aware that common building products such as clay bricks, concrete, tiles and fibro cement products contain silica. Silica dust is usually created when such building products, sandstone or rocks are cut, drilled or worked on in a way that creates fine particles of silica in the air. It is breathing in this crystalline form of silica that causes silicosis.

"Silicosis is not a naturally occurring disease. Its development is directly associated with workplace exposure to silica dust. Workers who are most at risk include those engaged in tunneling and excavation work, road building, demolition work and explosive blasting work, as well as those in slate, granite cutting and glass manufacturing industries, brickmaking and some manufacturing processes"

GB, what have you got on the whole "white house retypes EPA press releases concerning air quality of ground zero" thing?

That's probably the only thing I think the troofers may have had something on.

Having been around for many controlled demolitions of Casinos in Vegas, though, considering how many thousands of spectators there were within a block of each of those implosions, and everyone getting hit by the dust cloud (depending on wind direction) and how noone has ever died from being a witness to one of those implosions... why would WTC be different? Vegas casinos were older, many of them used asbestos... so maybe not.

What do you think about the fact that his wife died, reportedly from injecting drugs? What do you think about the fact that the biopsy on his lungs from 2003 showed only minor abnormalities? These are inconvenient indeed for the idea that Zadroga's death was caused by his work at GZ.

I'll let the epidemiologists determine the facts. But if I had to bet, I'd guess this is another Gulf War Syndrome thing, where everybody that gets sick blames it on their work on the pile.

Anonymous. Are you a moron? I have pictures taken from across the street for some of those implosions. A block is a relative term. People weren't hiding behind steel bunkers several miles away like it was a fucking nuclear bomb going off.

No, they were on the strip behind a chain link fence a good couple thousand feet away maybe, and sometimes just across the street in the case of the Landmark Hotel.

Oh, and if that still sounds like "fail" to you, then explain any of the hotels literally across the street that didn't get windows blown out...

Do you have any idea how close these buildings are to each other? Or what the term "controlled" even means?

"Anticipating a ban (on the use of asbestos in construction in NY), the builders stopped using the materials by the time they reached the 40th floor on the north tower, the first one to go up..." According to a spokesperson for the Port Authority, "more than half of the original asbestos-containing material was later replaced."

"There was also some controversy that the lack of asbestos used in the World Trade Center contributed to the fast collapse of the buildings. It was stated, in a New York Times article, that non-asbestos fireproofing used to construct the World Trade Center would have been less effective than products that contained asbestos, which ultimately shortened the time that the people had to escape."

The New York Daily News wrote, "...Along with Breton and Baden, the doctors who cared for Zadroga at several hospitals concluded his illness was caused by toxic fumes at Ground Zero. The New York City pension board and the U.S. Social Security Administration agreed and declared Zadroga disabled when he retired, said Zadroga family lawyer Michael Barasch.

"Hirsch is the 'only one who believes [Zadroga] died as a result of crushing up medications and injecting them,' Barasch said."

I have a very hard time believing that detective Zadroga was married to a hardcore intravenous drug user--that allegation doesn't compute.

Since the "lethal infection could not be conclusively determined to be the result of intravenous drug use", it's reasonable to ask if there might be another explanation for why she passed away at such a young age (29 years-old).

On the other hand, intravenous drug use is a distinct possibility because, as a family friend pointed out, "everybody down here knew what was going on."

If that statement is true, the question that hasn't been answered is when did Zadroga's wife start using intravenous drugs--before or after detective Zadroga's death?

So far, I've read nothing that answers that question--and we may never know the answer.

I wonder how much of the network cabling in the WTC was non-Plenum grade? In my Network plus class we were told to haul ass and up-wind should a fire break out in the workplace. Ground Zero burned for weeks, and nothing save for the paper products would have been healthy to inhale.

I guess my point is that there was enough bad stuff in the air at Ground Zero that I have no problem establishing a fund for those folks. I understand that there are thousands of factors that contribute to any decline in health. As long as the claims are review responsibly I have no issue here.

I agree with Marc, and even Jon Gold when he focuses on that aspect of what he's "fighting for."

The problem is, we waste so much time arguing with the "digital fakery-no plane at the pentagon-nano-thermite-why no jooooos at work that day" dumbasses, that we never get to address some of the valid criticisms of the government's handling of 9/11.

It seems that The goofy "Git" is now on medication that has calmed him down considerably and enabled his rational functions to peek through the haze! Of course,hundreds of thousands of workers and residents will die of this unprecedented cocktail of serious poisons that hovered over the area for many months.It is literally inhuman for this to be even controversial and utterly deranged for the federal government to abandon their responsibility to the incredibly selfless, patriotic and heroic sacrifices so many made.Pat the Curly Haired Jerkoff is truly less than a weasel.I bet he went for dumbo Ronnie Reagan's "welfare-queen" slander in a big way,also.Hey Paddy,churning out insane threads full of complete bullshit is no way to get a freaking rest.Hit the beach,Dogboy,your slip is really showing!

The ArseHooligan, fugitive from justice, whines, "...It seems that The goofy "Git" is now on medication that has calmed him down considerably and enabled his rational functions to peek through the haze!"

The problem is, we waste so much time arguing with the "digital fakery-no plane at the pentagon-nano-thermite-why no jooooos at work that day" dumbasses, that we never get to address some of the valid criticisms of the government's handling of 9/11.

And you'll notice that the Truthers have nothing to say about this thread, except their 9-11 conspiracy memes of choice.

With a bang AND a whimper,the Debunker Cult throws in with the Neanderthals of the Republican Party and quietly starts raising funds for "Palin 2012".Why do you creeps even bother anymore,I'd like to know.You're lined with the worst this country has to offer.And bragging about it.

Tritedope,you really are three piles of shit.Only a mental patient sniffing crank with Rush Limbaugh,or Pornboy,could think that the Zadroga bill is anything but justice.I bet the O.J. Simpson trial was a cliffhanger for you,as well.

Tritedope,you really are three piles of shit.Only a mental patient sniffing crank with Rush Limbaugh,or Pornboy,could think that the Zadroga bill is anything but justice.I bet the O.J. Simpson trial was a cliffhanger for you,as well.

What the hell are Heckle and Jeckle from the Debunker Cult saying here? That they're whiny dogs,in a cult,who have no argument on this one.Back to the woodshed Tritefuck,you've now proven to the world that you're on the side of the bad guys versus the good guys-you know the men and women who sacrificed their futures when their nation and city called on them,in its time of direst need.How do you sleep at night knowing that you are less than a weasel and defending the lowest of the lowest? Jes' askin',Goober.